Stop the Bleed Kits: First-Aid Training for Different Bleeding Types

On most manufacturing floors, machinery, sharp objects and other risks make cuts and more dire bleeding injuries possible. We look at how to train more of your employees to be ready to help.

Are you ready to handle a traumatic bleeding injury at your facility? How about everyone on the safety team or your machinists?

At first glance, training multiple company employees to handle a bleed injury might seem extreme, but when a traumatic injury occurs and requires aid, the more trained help the better.

Here’s why: The average time for someone to bleed out is just two to five minutes. Meanwhile, the average time for first responders to arrive on the scene is typically seven to 10 minutes, explains the Stop the Bleed campaign.

The ability of the safety team and trained employees to control traumatic bleeding can be the difference between life and death for an employee.

“No matter how rapid the arrival of professional emergency responders, bystanders will always be first on the scene,” points out the Department of Homeland Security, which supports the Stop the Bleed campaign. “A person who is bleeding can die from blood loss within five minutes, therefore it is important to quickly stop the blood loss. Those nearest to someone with life-threatening injuries are best positioned to provide first care.”

Why Stop the Bleed Kits Makes Sense in Manufacturing

Cuts and even amputations are a concern in machining, with the rate of amputations nearly twice that of any other private industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Given that, having multiple employees trained to manage injuries that involve bleeding makes logical sense. One approach is to borrow from the Stop the Bleed campaign. Originally developed to address the needs of schools to be prepared to respond to shooting incidents, its principles, training and use of first-aid kits with tourniquets port over well to manufacturing environments.

Read more about the contents of industrial first-aid kits.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s general industry first-aid standard, 29 CFR 1910.151(b), provides that “in the absence of an infirmary, clinic or hospital in near proximity to the workplace which is used for the treatment of all injured employees, a person or persons shall be adequately trained to render first aid. Adequate first aid supplies shall be readily available.”

OSHA emphasizes that workplaces need to have plans in place to handle traumatic injuries and even uses a time element of less than four minutes as a parameter for having such staff on-site.

“In workplaces where serious accidents such as those involving falls, suffocation, electrocution or amputation are possible, emergency medical services must be available within three to four minutes, if there is no employee on the site who is trained to render first aid,” the agency explains in a 2019 standards interpretation letter on first aid for bleeding control.

“While the standards do not prescribe a number of minutes,” the letter continues, “OSHA has long interpreted the term ‘near proximity’ to mean that emergency care must be available within no more than three to four minutes from the workplace.”

The letter, which specifically responds to a query about Stop the Bleed kits and possible updates to OSHA standards on bleeding controls, points out that it views its recommended time limits as maximums: “OSHA does not prohibit but encourages shorter response times when feasible.” It also advises businesses to update first-aid training policies to keep them current.

Compare different types of kits depending on your safety team’s needs on MSCdirect.com.

How does your safety team train the staff to manage traumatic injuries? Would a Stop the Bleed approach make workers feel safer on the job?